


Rest Cure

by ianthebroome



Category: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Caretaking, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Mutual Pining, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28112943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ianthebroome/pseuds/ianthebroome
Summary: ‘Accident or not, he did have a sword at your throat!’ Thaniel said, before he registered what was odd about Mori’s tone. It was surprise. He hesitated. ‘I suppose those don’t happen to you much?’Thaniel changes his mind.
Relationships: Keita Mori/Thaniel Steepleton
Comments: 24
Kudos: 54
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Rest Cure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cienna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cienna/gifts).



Thaniel let go of Yuki, who scrambled up and stood breathing hard for a moment before darting away, sword abandoned, behind the bakery across the street.

Thaniel stood too, although his arms and legs felt frozen. ‘Mori?’

‘It’s all right,’ Mori said as Thaniel reached out, hand hovering near where Mori was clasping his left shoulder. A stain was darkening his coat. ‘It’s just a cut, don’t worry.’

‘It’s not all right. For God’s sake!’

‘He only caught me. It’s—’ He stopped abruptly, blinking at Thaniel, and drew in a breath. His frown smoothed to a blank. Even in the twilight, he looked pale. ‘I’ll be fine.’

The ice in Thaniel melted a little, but a shard of it remained, stuck in his chest. ‘You say that. This morning you were fairly unconcerned about being knocked about and thrown in prison. I’m sorry. How bad is it?’

‘It needs to be stitched.’ Mori’s voice was as even as ever. ‘Dr Haverly can do it.’

‘Wouldn’t a hospital be better?’

‘No. They’ll ask questions. It'll be bad for the village.’

‘What about Yuki?’

Mori’s gaze drifted aside. ‘He’ll be frightened for a few days. I think it’ll do him good. Don’t go after him,’ he added, as Thaniel looked narrowly in the direction the boy had disappeared.

Thaniel sighed and turned back to Mori. Despite his stillness, his hand was trembling. ‘I wasn’t about to. Here, sit down.’

Mori let himself be helped onto the low wall around the shrine. The orange and green lanterns outside the tea shop rose and fell with the wind, casting a shifting light. Thaniel sank down beside him and pulled off his own necktie. ‘Let me—Christ.’

When Mori lifted his hand, it was easier to see how much blood there was, dark against his grey coat. Thaniel unbuttoned the coat and helped Mori shrug it off. He surveyed Mori’s arm. He could tell where the sword-slash was, high up near his shoulder, from where the sleeve was torn through.

‘Here, let me—’ He lifted his tie, and when Mori didn’t object, wrapped it carefully around his arm, pulling it tight. ‘Could you wait while I find a cab?’

‘Yes, yes.’

Thaniel took off his own coat and, ignoring Mori’s raised eyebrows, draped it over his shoulders before setting off for the gate. In the busier traffic on Knightsbridge it only took a minute to hail a cab and lead it back into the village.

‘I’m sorry,’ Thaniel said when he and Mori were inside, on the short drive back to Filigree Street. ‘Really. I was an idiot to do that when you were holding me back.’

‘Maybe,’ Mori said slowly, ‘but I don’t think that was why. I think he would have gone for you at first. That’s what I remember—being afraid of.’

‘Oh.’ Thaniel frowned. ‘Either way.’

‘It’s not your fault. Yuki's either. It was just an accident.’ Mori’s voice dropped as he spoke.

‘Accident or not, he did have a sword at your throat!’ Thaniel said, before he registered what was odd about Mori’s tone. It was surprise. He hesitated. ‘I suppose those don’t happen to you much?’

Mori slumped into his corner of the box until the horses stopped.

There was a carriage outside their door. ‘Who is—oh, _no_ ,’ Thaniel groaned, as the cabman took his shilling and drove off, having betrayed no curiosity at either a clerk in his shirtsleeves at night or his visibly bloodied Japanese companion. ‘It’s Lord Carrow.’

‘Stay and speak with him if you like.’ In the carriage’s lamps, Mori looked paler than before.

A tall man in a cape was stepping down. ‘You there!’

‘Don’t be stupid. I can’t stop, I’m sorry,’ Thaniel called at him, pushing Mori on. ‘Please tell Grace not to worry. I’ll wire her.’

‘That’s Miss Carrow to you!’ her father shouted back. As Thaniel shut the door he saw him staring after the two of them, looking caught between outrage and astonishment. Thaniel couldn’t bring himself to care much. Grace would find a way around it.

Mori kept the kitchen fire banked during the day, so the range was still warm. Thaniel tipped in more coal and filled the kettle to boil, then took down the bottle of brandy from the corner cupboard. Mori watched him from the table.

‘Right,’ Thaniel said, setting a glass in front of him, ‘drink that. How is it?’

‘I’ll live,’ Mori said, but he obeyed, moving stiffly.

‘Shall I go next door?’ Thaniel let out a breath. ‘This is feeling rather familiar. Don’t get up, please, I’ll be back in a minute.’

If Dr Haverly was put out at being called away from his dinner, his manners were too well-practised to show it. ‘A mishap with a sword, I hear?’ he said, drawing a chair up to Mori, who said nothing. ‘Will you be kind and fetch another lamp or two, Mr Steepleton? And hot water and soap, if you would.’

Thaniel poured a basin of water from the steaming kettle as Dr Haverly unwound his makeshift bandage. The tie laid aside, Mori began to unbutton his waistcoat with his right hand. ‘And my dressing gown,’ he told Thaniel quietly.

‘Preferable to one of my shirts,’ Dr Haverly murmured.

When Thaniel returned to the kitchen Haverly was examining Mori’s arm, which was bare and damp from the soap. The wound was a lean, dark stroke down his shoulder. It was an effort for Thaniel not to stare as he handed the things over and sat next to Haverly, across the corner of the table from Mori.

Haverly unstopped a bottle, releasing the sweet scent of carbolic acid that always reminded Thaniel of the nurse the big house sent when he or Annabel was ill. Haverly poured some solution over a silver needle and scissors in a dish and some into a larger bottle, which he used to dampen a sponge.

‘This won’t take a moment,’ he said, sweeping it briskly over Mori’s arm. ‘Your friend with the sword kept it sharp, anyway. The incision is neat and it should heal well. Keep to bed and watch it for a few days. A feverish reaction is common but should subside after thirty-six or forty-eight hours. It’s the shock. Send for me if it goes on too long or the pain grows worse.’

He paused to thread his needle, and Thaniel looked at Mori. His eyes were cast to the floor, his jaw set, and his chest rising and falling shallowly. It sent a startled jolt through Thaniel to see him afraid.

Only, that wasn’t it. Thaniel dug his nails into his palms as he understood. He wasn’t imagining the stitches that were about to happen. He must have already felt them.

He didn’t react when Dr Haverly set to work and it was Thaniel who had to look away, itching to pace the room. It was over quickly. Haverly bandaged the arm and Thaniel helped Mori pull on his brown dressing gown.

‘Bed rest, mind,’ Haverly said, packing his case. ‘No, no,’ as Thaniel tried to offer him a banknote, ‘I don’t charge Mr Mori. Just both of you try not to make a habit of getting blown up or losing duels, eh?’

Thaniel saw him out, and turned to find Mori in the parlour doorway. Mori paused. ‘Well. I’ll follow orders. Do you mind if I leave—?’ He made a gesture that took in the kitchen and his workshop. Thaniel had forgotten the state it was in from the morning.

‘Go on. Do you need anything else?’

‘You’ve already helped. Thank you.’

‘Of course.’ Thaniel watched him climb the stairs. ‘Mori—I am sorry,’ he said, lamely. He didn’t only mean about Yuki. The police had come because of him, and he could never say so.

Mori stopped and turned, giving him an unreadable look, then nodded once. ‘Goodnight.’

Thaniel did his best to put the workshop in order, making piles of the scattered gold leaves and lengths of chain when he couldn’t guess which drawers they belonged to. Afterwards it was quick work to straighten the kitchen. As he collected Mori’s waistcoat from the back of a chair, something fell out of the pocket and rolled. It was a steel ring. Mori didn’t normally wear rings, because they got in the way of his work, and this one was plain and rather small, but it did look like it might fit him.

A telegram came the next morning.

_Father won’t speak to me but distinct impression nothing settled. Second thoughts? Grace._

Thaniel pocketed it and carried on making the tea. He was growing used to handling the blue and white cups. When he’d first moved in, he’d had horrible visions of smashing one on the flagstones. He made up a tray with bread and butter, rice, miso soup, and biscuits, and carried it upstairs.

Mori was sitting up in bed with a Japanese novel face-down on his lap. He gave Thaniel a look, but let him hand over the crowded tray.

‘I really don’t mind staying,’ Thaniel tried.

‘No, I’ll be fine, really.’

Thaniel would have liked to stay even so, but he knew it was unreasonable to say so; and anyway, Mori probably wanted to be left alone. ‘If you’re sure.’

‘Lord Leveson will want you for the dispatches.’ Mori lifted a cup and breathed in the steam. ‘If you don’t turn up he’ll ask someone else, and he’ll have forgotten all about you by next week.’

It was past lunch in the end when the Minister dismissed him and he was finally alone at his desk. No one had attempted to arrest him, at least. He wondered if Williamson was going to make trouble.

He pulled the telegraph machine towards him and stared at the key.

_All fine. Lord C may need more convincing. Can’t meet today, sorry, will write properly soon._

He tapped out the message to Grace before he could overthink it, and spent the rest of the afternoon filing wine merchants’ invoices from the ball.

When he got home Mori was in the parlour, sketching some complicated clockwork involving the different phases of the moon. Katsu was basking on the hearth. It might just have been that Mori’s armchair was close to the fire, but there was more colour than normal in his cheeks.

Thaniel wondered if he ought to be working and decided not to fuss. He sat beside the octopus. ‘Is that a new idea?’

‘Drawing is restful,’ Mori said, then his pencil stilled and he glanced up. ‘Sorry. Yes, it’s new. Simplified astronomical clock.’

‘Doesn’t look very simple.’

‘Compared to Tanaka’s Ten Thousand Year Clock, it is.’

Thaniel watched the drawing take shape for a few minutes. Mori put down his paper and looked back.

‘All right?’ Thaniel said. 

‘Yes, just. Could you—’ Mori sighed and touched his shoulder. ‘It’s impossible to tie with one hand.’

‘Oh! Of course, I should have thought.’ He had, really, but had also assumed Mori wouldn’t want the help.

Upstairs, Thaniel ran the hot water in the bathroom sink until it was steaming. Mori sat on the edge of the bath and shrugged out of one arm of his dressing gown. He started to undo the bandage himself, until Thaniel knocked his hand aside lightly, kneeling down.

Mori let him examine the stitches, which looked neat, although the skin near the wound seemed flushed. Thaniel unrolled a fresh bandage.

‘You answered what I was going to say again, just now,’ he said at Mori’s arm, concentrating on wrapping the flannel in neatly overlapping circles.

‘Yes.’

‘Is it—’ he hardly knew what he wanted to ask, only that he had to say something more. ‘Does it make things difficult for you? I mean, keeping track of what’s really happened, or having to hide it all?’

‘I don’t know any differently. I’ve always been this way.’

Thaniel held the bandage in place with a hand round Mori’s arm as he cut the roll free. ‘As a child, you could remember everything that would happen to you?’

‘Not everything. Only parts, the same as remembering backwards. And only what was reasonably likely.’

‘Still.’ Thaniel glanced up as he tied the knot, meeting Mori’s eyes briefly. ‘That’s why you like dice, isn’t it? It wasn’t just to give us a fair chance. Or random gears, like in Katsu?’

‘Mm.’

‘Better not to know everything?’

Mori pulled on his sleeve and stood, absently flexing his left hand. ‘I don’t know. It depends.’

By evening it was clear that Mori’s fever was growing worse. He drank a pot of weak green tea instead of eating and took himself to bed with headache pills. Thaniel looked around the door now and then, wary of bothering him, until he began to toss and mutter in his sleep.

A chair beside his bed had been serving as a table, and Thaniel moved a stack of books and cups to the floor to sit there, leaving his candlestick on the windowsill. He shook Mori gently by the shoulder. Mori inhaled and turned to him, blinking away a glassy look. His face was flushed red.

‘Have some water. Here. Is the shoulder any worse?’

Mori drank a glass and collapsed onto his back again, closing his eyes. ‘It’s all right.’ He lay for a moment breathing like he’d climbed ten flights of stairs. ‘Would you mind opening the window?’

It was a cool evening and the window was already open. Thaniel bit his cheek. ‘I’m just going to take your temperature.’

Mori didn’t seem to hear him. Carefully, Thaniel touched the back of his hand to his forehead. It was hot. He hesitated, then took up Mori’s wrist, which was lying outside the covers, and felt his pulse, fluttering quickly.

Mori stirred and murmured something in Japanese. It was too unclear for Thaniel to catch any of the words except ‘Kuroda’, because he’d read the name more than once in the dispatches from Tokyo. Mori must have known him.

Thaniel watched him for some time, rubbing the heel of his palm against his chest. Haverly had said to expect a fever. Mori had said he would be fine, but likelihoods could change—and he had not always told the whole truth.

It was nearly midnight. He would wait until the morning, and if Mori was no better then, he’d go next door, whether it made him a fool or not.

He fetched more water and his dictionary and sat alternating between watching Mori toss and turn and copying lists of vocabulary. Even in the cold, his head grew heavy after an hour or two and the shapes began to take on dreamlike meaning. Bird, crow—the same character with its feathery tail, only without the eye—gull, crane, sparrow—once a sparrow had come to the window of his old lodgings in the mornings, for long enough that he’d tamed it to perch on his hand, then just as suddenly it had disappeared.

’Thaniel?’

He sat upright and it took a moment to recognise Mori’s shape in the dark, leaning up in bed on one elbow. The candle was out. Thaniel’s hand tightened on his book. There had been no urgency in Mori’s voice; he only sounded blurrier than usual. But something must be wrong: it was the first time he'd ever said that. ‘Mori?’

‘What are you doing there?’ Mori said, after a short pause. His outline was motionless. 

‘Oh. Just thought I’d sit up. How do you feel?’

A longer pause. ‘Are you upset?’

‘What? No, of course not.’

‘It’s cold. Come here.’

Heat flared in Thaniel’s face and chest, down to his fingertips, as if he were paper caught by a spark. He couldn’t move.

‘I have to go to Rome next week,’ Mori said in an undertone. ‘Did I tell you?’

Thaniel stared at him. ‘Why?’ he said at last.

Mori didn’t answer. He lowered himself onto his back and shivered visibly.

He had a chill. Thaniel took a slow breath. He was in a fever-dream. He was still in Japan. He might have left anyone behind there.

Thaniel got up, stiff and shivering himself, and threw more coal on the fire. The flames leapt up. He shut the window and came back to the bed.

‘Your room is always colder,’ Mori said hazily. Thaniel could see him better now, firelight catching the edge of his hair and cheek. His gaze was unfocused; he kept blinking and pulling his eyes back to Thaniel. ‘Six won’t come down tomorrow. She’ll spend all morning on her telescope.’

‘Who?’

Mori shifted over slightly in the bed.

An extra body under the covers would be more efficient than waiting for the fire to heat the room. Mori would be embarrassed later—but would he, even? Thaniel thought of the bathroom door ajar on the day after the ball. He climbed in and settled on his side. Mori turned his head so they were facing each other.

He tried to remember when he had last shared a bed with anyone. When he was very small, possibly. Either that or never. It was strange to feel the mattress dip and the bedclothes shift as Mori tugged them up. On the pillows, the scent of lemons mingled with the clean rosin smell of sheets from the launderer’s.

‘Can I?’ He reached for Mori’s wrist and Mori let him catch it and feel for his pulse. It was as rapid as before.

‘How do you feel?’ he asked again, but Mori only blinked at him and took his arm back slowly. ‘What’s going to happen tomorrow, then?’ he tried, to keep him talking.

‘You don’t usually ask me that.’

‘I’d like to know.’

Mori hesitated for long enough that Thaniel thought he wouldn’t answer. When he did, he sounded half-asleep. ‘Six won’t want to leave her room. Eventually we’ll get her out by promising her a visit to the Greenwich Observatory. We’ll have sandwiches in the park and watch the time ball drop. She’s going to like that so much she’ll want to go every Sunday for a while, sorry.’

‘Six?’ Thaniel said. His hand had drifted to his own wrist under the covers and he gripped it tightly. ‘The girl from the workhouse?’

Mori looked at him blankly. ‘Osei will come over after dinner. She’ll bring daifuku. The ones with strawberries inside. She’ll stay while you and I go to the concert.’

‘Concert?’

‘Beethoven, at St James’s Hall? The Russian quartet?’

Something charged and heavy was building in Thaniel, like electricity in Mori’s generator. He swallowed. ‘What then?’

‘Then we’ll come home, and have sherry, and you’ll play some of the 31st sonata.’

‘And then?’

‘And then,’ Mori repeated drowsily, his eyes closing, ‘it won’t be tomorrow anymore.’

Thaniel woke up gloriously warm. It was still dark. The fire had burned low and moonlight was casting silver squares on the bed. Mori had turned all the way towards him in sleep, lying on his uninjured side. His left arm was heavy around Thaniel’s waist.

Thaniel lay unmoving until the need to see that Mori was all right overcame the fear of disturbing him. He raised the back of his hand to Mori’s forehead. It was cool. His hair had fallen forward and a few strands stuck there damply.

Mori’s fingers tightened minutely on his hip, and Thaniel drew his hand back. Mori opened his eyes.

It was too dark to tell if his gaze was clear or feverish. Thaniel tried to search his face anyway. He was very close, his quick breath touching Thaniel’s cheek.

He slid his hand up Thaniel’s chest to his collar and took hold of it. He didn’t push Thaniel away, or pull him in, only curled his fingers into the fabric and watched him levelly.

He was waiting for Thaniel—for whoever he thought Thaniel was—for what? Thaniel’s heart quickened until it was drumming in his ears, loud enough that Mori must have been able to hear it, if he couldn't feel it at his throat.

He reached out and gently pushed Mori’s hair away from his forehead. Mori closed his eyes. Thaniel stroked his hair again, his hand moving in and out of the moonlight. It was so quiet, no colour anywhere, that it was like being underwater.

He kept stroking Mori’s hair very lightly, from temple to ear, then up higher, tracing back to his neck. It felt finer than Thaniel’s under his fingertips. He kept his eyes on his hand, not daring to look back at Mori’s face. It wasn’t long before Mori’s grasp on him loosened, as if he had never been fully awake at all.

When Thaniel woke again it was late in the morning, judging by the light. Rain was thrumming on the roof and there was a weight at his feet that he became aware was Katsu. Carefully, he sat up. Mori was sprawled on his back, facing away. His breathing was steady and the flush of the day before had gone.

Thaniel took a breath, and felt so light with it that it was easy to rise out of bed, smoothing the sheets behind him. He went downstairs to boil the kettle.

The clink of the tea things must have woken Mori, because he was frowning at the ceiling when Thaniel came in. ‘What time is it?’

‘Past nine.’

Thaniel handed Mori a cup before balancing the tray on the chair and sitting down cross-legged beside the bed. Mori pushed himself up and wrapped both hands around it. ‘What day is it? Why aren’t you at Whitehall?’

‘I’m having today off. I’ve been overworked.’

Mori looked at him suspiciously.

‘Come down later and show me where all the cogs go in your workshop. Then I might practise a bit on the piano, if you don’t mind.’

From behind his teacup, Mori shook his head.

On his way downstairs Thaniel stopped for the letters on the doorstep. Some were from the morning’s post and some from last night’s, which he had never collected. There was another telegram addressed to him. He put it aside without opening it.


End file.
